DeSantis Goes Pro-Putin, Even Lindsey Graham Cries Putin Is Hitler

The two frontrunners for the 2024 GOP ticket right now, if we are to believe any poll whatsoever, are Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump. As of last night, on Tucker Carlson’s show, DeSantis did his first foreign policy statement and guess what? It comports perfectly with Trump’s. What that signifies is that now the GOP is the pro-Putin party. Kudos, Nikita Khrushchev. You said back in the 50’s that you would “take us over, without firing a single shot,” “defeat us from within,” and you have managed to put the entire Republican party in your pocket, with few exceptions. Maybe DeStalin should be DeSantis’ new handle? The Bulwark:

Answering a questionnaire sent out by the Fox News host, the Florida governor aligned himself firmly with the Tucker/Trump position, declaring that protecting Ukraine was not a key U.S. interest. In today’s New York Times, Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman note that this is a sharp break with “Republicans who are determined to defend Ukraine against Russia’s invasion.”

And, they note, his choice of venue was as revealing as his statement itself.

Mr. Carlson is one of the most ardent opponents of U.S. involvement in Ukraine. He has called President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine a corrupt “antihero” and mocked him for dressing “like the manager of a strip club.”

DeSantis chose to declare his America First bona fides to a guy who declared that he was rooting for Russia.

“While the U.S. has many vital national interests — securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness with our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural and military power of the Chinese Communist Party — becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them,” Mr. DeSantis said in a statement that Mr. Carlson read aloud on his show.

Mr. DeSantis’s views on Ukraine policy now align with Mr. Trump’s. The former president also answered Mr. Carlson’s questionnaire.

While DeSantis used some boilerplate language about not writing a “blank check” his choice of language was revealing: He dismisses Russia’s brutal and illegal invasion “as a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia.” […]

In a preview of his presidential candidacy, his statement “dripped with sarcastic contempt for policymakers who believe the only way to stop the Ukrainian people’s suffering is to remove Mr. Putin from power.”

“A policy of  ‘regime change’  in Russia (no doubt popular among the D.C. foreign policy interventionists) ,” Mr. DeSantis said, “would greatly increase the stakes of the conflict, making  the use of nuclear weapons more likely.  Such a policy would neither stop the death and destruction of the war, nor produce a pro-American, Madisonian constitutionalist in the Kremlin. History indicates that Putin’s successor, in this hypothetical, would likely be even more ruthless.  The costs to achieve such a dubious outcome could become astronomical.”

That is DeSantis speak for, “Hey, Vlad’s all right. We could do worse.” Umm….how? Exhume Stalin from the crypt and reanimate him somehow?

Even Lindsey Graham had a momentary spasm of conscience. Don’t expect it to last, but no harm looking at it in real time, right?

Ukraine willingly gave up their nuclear weapons in 1994 in exchange for Russia’s recognition of Ukraine’s territorial sovereignty, which included Crimea.

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) March 14, 2023

The last time someone in Europe claimed the land of others, and tried to take it by force of arms, was Adolf Hitler’s attempt to build a Third Reich.

Those who miscalculated Hitler’s intentions paved the way for a wider war and missed many opportunities to stop him early on.

— Lindsey Graham (@LindseyGrahamSC) March 14, 2023

That’s the plain truth of it, but DeSantis wants to remain in his bubble. Former General Barry McCaffrey sees this for the disaster that it is.

McCaffrey said DeSantis knows exactly what he’s doing by kneeling to Putin. Raw Story:

“The only thing I would disagree with is that this is ignorance,” he said. “I think Gov. DeSantis deliberately, knowingly, attacking to the far-right to pick up trump wing nuts in a primary election season. He’s very well educated, very knowledgeable, a veteran, he worked with navy SEALS on deployment. He knew exactly what he was doing, and what he did was, I would full little concur, he did massive damage to U.S. solidarity with NATO interests in Europe and our own national security interests.

And he told the Russians, hang in there, it’s quite likely all we got to do is endure for another 24 months, and these people will be ours. Following which, we will see threats to the Baltic republics, Poland, Romania, you name it. So, it was a terrible statement. He knew what he was doing. His political insiders will say, well, come on, the general election will tack to the center, but this is serious damage he just did to the United States.”

Here’s the entire clip, ten minutes and well worth the listen.

Ron DeSantis is not cut out to play politics on the national stage. He’s pretty much redoing the Trump playbook blow by blow but the fact of the matter is, he’s not Trump and it’s already been done before.

DeSantis may have crucified himself last night. He failed to prove up a substantial difference between himself and Trump and he embarrassed the entire GOP as a whole. I don’t believe he’s going to get Trump’s MAGAs and I think he lost all hope of getting the support of the saner factions of the GOP. And that is assuming those still exist.